Because I was on a secret mission yesterday, the regularly scheduled tour through Summa Contra Gentiles has been preempted. It returns next week.

The Western world, particularly in these once United States, has been experiencing leftward lurches these past fifty or so years. These are localized accelerations on top of the gentle progressive drift we’ve experienced since the (victors really do get to write history) Reformation, or perhaps since Ockham lovingly introduced his Nominalism. The exact date is irrelevant. The question is why.

Drift is easier to explain than lurches. The moment any institution or society founded on a set of rigorous, clear, and unbreakable rules allows an elite of that group the first public unpunished exception to a rule, the precedent has been set that that rule can be broken, which eventually leads to the rule being abandoned. Keep in mind that a break is not the same as a (re)interpretation. A break is a departure, a reinterpretation is a blind eye and an acknowledgement of the primacy of the rule. We drift left (the denial of human nature) because the rules were once right (their acknowledgment).

All this happens at the small and the large, at the here and there, at the local and national. Space permits only a synoptic view here. A full treatment would require a book.

Our society’s and our institutions’ drift continues, particularly this past century in matters reproductive (a panicked retreat from human nature). Used to be a rule that a hotel would not let a room to an unmarried couple, or a couple that did not give every appearance (the blind eye) of being married. Once it became known that some elite had broken this rule, it was deemed breakable (first locally then everywhere), and it is now barely a memory. Afterwards, the rule was said to be burdensome and uneconomic.

Pregnant unmarried girls used to be shunned (the rule) or temporarily put away (blind eye), but again some signal from on high allowed a break, which over the course of a few decades led to the rule’s abandonment. Afterwards, the rule was said to be cruel. Before, it was said to be for her and for society’s own good.

Abortion (recall we’re discussing the West) used to be seen as horrible. Abortionists were punished. Women who were known to have had one (the rule) were also made to suffer, but women who had them on the sly, before their pregnancies became known, (the blind eye) got away with it. The breaking in this instance was a prime time circus in the USA. It was a combination of elite signal and public plea. This pleading was the cause of the lurch.

Drift is caused by rules being broken by somebody at the top where knowledge of the break is generally known and where the break is unpunished. Once an elite breaks a rule he finds it difficult (but not impossible) to punish or to support punishment for those under him who have broken the same rule, or even other rules. Elitehood itself atrophies. Drift happens because people quite naturally look up to elites. The phenomenon applies to all cultural matters, from speech to dress to music to sexual behavior. Did not somebody once say that with great power comes great responsibility?

A lurch is another thing. This is caused mainly from below, an agitation partly from the masses but mostly from the sub-elite with the complicity of friendly elites. The sub-elite are those who (with good reason) imagine themselves attaining elitehood. They have not much formal authority. They are what we used to call the upper middle class. They are generally younger and many will be promoted but are impatient for the transition. Drift occurs in the relation between elites and sub-elites, too. Elites (those who hold authority and power) no longer engender automatic respect because they, the elite, have allowed an egalitarian drift to influence their behavior. Once an elite asks himself, “What makes my idea so special?” he is lost and can be swayed easily by those under him.

Before the abortion taboo was abandoned there were public arguments and demonstrations from the sub-elite generally citing pity and the suffering “unwanted children” would cause their would-be mothers. These were made prior to the rule being broken, and not cited after the fact as comforting post hoc explanation as in drift. To prevent this promised suffering, a new “right” to kill was discovered in the rule book by elites. The elite was not forced and could have easily resisted (the majority of elites held to tradition), yet the “elite” by now was not the same as the elite before the drift. After the break, drift came back into play and abortion is now euphemistically termed “reproductive healthcare.”

The acceptability of homosexual acts followed a similar path. Those men discovered misconducting themselves were punished, shunned, and made to suffer (the rule). Those who could keep their activities secret were generally ignored (blind eye). But a general public flouting of the rule and an agitation by sub-elites who cited “fairness”, “equality”, “consenting adults” and the like again caused the elite to discover a new rule which said homosexual acts were to be “celebrated.” Drift returned until the sub-elite again pressured elites to allow two men to call themselves “married.” Smart money says elites will soon discover that this “right” has been in the rule book all along, too.

The masses acquiesce. They have little choice. But something odd happens during a lurch. The more intelligent of the masses and most of the elite keep to the old rules a long as they can, until drift has caught up to them and wiped away all traces of tradition. It it only those less intelligent in the masses, i.e. those mostly likely to give themselves over to self, who join the sub-elites in forsaking the old. This is because the less intelligent reason the sub-elites, who are closer to them than elites, because they are the loudest, are the elite. That mistake helps the lurch do its work, of course.

As is by now clear, the general argument given by sub-elites for abandoning civilization and human nature is to eliminate suffering and sacrifice in the particular. Yet the old elites understood what the sub-elites, all post-Christians, do not: that suffering and sacrifice in the particular can lead to a greater general good. Worse, he cannot comprehend that a lack of sacrifice must cause a greater evil. Elites are too exhausted to hold themselves up as examples.

So the drift left will continue, and it is likely to be increasingly punctuated by lurches producing more acute breaks and painful disruptions. It seems to me only one of two things can happen. The first is this. Once most of the old right rules are seen to have been eliminated, a new left rule book will be in place. It will be rigorous, clear, and unbreakable. It will be enforced, all experience suggests, ruthlessly. The “good” of suffering will be rediscovered. Rightward drift might set in here, too, and it will be somewhat faster paced than the leftward drift was because, of course, ignoring human nature produces deleterious effects. More likely, the new rules will cause the new elites to be so fascinated by themselves, they won’t see their external enemies approach. Either way, look for a substantial reduction in population.

The second possibility is this. One of the lurches will cause a disruption too painful to be born. There will be revolt. Locally? Nationally? Who knows? Whether it is quashed by a new elite bent on imposing by force the new rule book or led by an old elite sickened past endurance is the big question. Examples from history support both scenarios, but lean to the right.

When? If this woman’s words are any guide of the abyssal state of left argumentation, then soon, madam, soon.

Update Hints the camel’s straw lurch will come from the left in this article: “When Washington fiddled while Baltimore burned“. Why? Because the elite left are waiting to be asked to “step in” and save the day. They use the riots for drift, it is true, because racism, etc. But some will want to use the next big one to solve “all” riots by squelching the “cause”. And the cause, they will say, is the outspoken right who needs immediately be silenced and punished.

Related

49 Comments

1. If love and hate are on a continuum, and hate is outlawed, the continuum will still have an end, that is, it will run from love to strongly dislike. But if love and hate or two sides of a coin, then someone is going to have to outlaw coins.

2. The “bigoted comments” which were not quoted in the article could have been from the Bible. (I don’t know what the comments in question were, but it is poor writing to cite these alleged comments and suggest that they were worthy of a fine or a prison term without revealing what they were. I am also guessing that Phil Robertson did not condone actual violence, as in bloodshed. But it is a convenience to give gullible readers the impression that he made a call to arms, and started passing out torches and pitchforks after his TV appearance.)

3. The upper class in the US still marries at a fairly high rate. Marriage is increasingly rare in the middle class, and is almost non-existent at the lower end.

What you say here is all but inarguable. And when I clicked on that link to go to the Cohen piece, she underlined and highlighted what I feel myself: the talking stage is over. That an educated woman cannot see the totalitarian impulse at work in her thinking is a bad sign. There is no point in talking with such a woman. The argument is over. And not just on her end either. I wouldn’t waste my time either.

The left and the right, in America, but in western society as a whole, observe two completely different worlds. There is no middle ground, no bridge to be built. The left is on what the right would consider a suicide mission. Whether such a mission is driven by guilt, “higher” concerns, planet worship doesn’t matter. Those of us who don’t favor suicide will someday stand and fight (possibly literally).

This is depressing. That general foundation of agreement that existed, I would say, in the U.S. for most of our young nation’s history (slavery as an institution doesn’t quite fit here and is itself an example of what happens when talk runs out of room) is gone. Where one dates the going is debatable. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era is certainly a starting point, as is FDR, but I would argue that a rough agreement held into the Johnson era. The Viet Nam War was probably the spark, the sixties as a whole constitute the rest of the rolling explosion we continue to experience.

Here is how I see it. Either they (the left) win, or we (right or leaning right) win. There is no middle ground. This is exactly how the left sees it, in their zero sum world, and increasingly, the right as well. The left is motivated by a rancid, fervid neo-Marxism (which none of them understand or care to understand) and a wild emotivism that corrupts every rational cell in their collective bodies. They believe if they keep it up they will have succeeded in bending reality, and the world, to their will. Alas, I have bad news. What never happened before is not going to happen now either, despite our machines and gadgets and software, and wishful silly thinking. The time for debate is over (Obama is a perfect example of this go for broke take no prisoners thinking; he is not a president who wrestles with opponents; he crushes them).

We are not living in the nation the Founders imagined.

No nation can survive this state of affairs. To me, the first sign that we are experiencing the “end of days” will be when a state or group of states tries to secede. Whether America withers away in that fashion, or whether the central government tries to violently stop it, will determine if secession eventually leads to a new kind of civil war.

Of course, the house of cards the left has constructed (infinite debt, infinite guilt, infinite victimhood) can before that happens collapse on their heads. This is the preferred method.

Homosexuality became accepted because of AIDS. Had there been a similar disease in pedophiles or any other sexual orientation, that too would have been legitimized. Illness keep anyone from condemning a behaviour, and certainly from saying that the outcome was expected from the behaviour. Illness can make a lot of bad behaviours legitimate very quickly.

The woman’s words are typical. Said persons are, as I have said before, the type that throw chickens to the alligator living in their backyard, imagining the gator will never tire of the paltry chicken fare and move up to the person tossing the chickens. Their fate is sealed and they care not a wit about it.

First, terminology. Without a clear set of terms, it’s impossible to understand what you’re observing.

There is no “right vs. left” paradigm. It is Normal-America vs. Anti-Normal-America.

Once you understand that the struggle is against anti-Normals, then you’re ready to analyze that struggle.

The Antis (call them Politically Correct Progressives–the best term for their belief system) have worked for nearly 100 years to work their way into the transmission belts of American culture–the media, academia/education, and Hollywood.

Those transmission belts of culture are where they work their influence magic. This is how they work: Insert, for example, pro-abortion messages in those three domains, repeat, repeat, repeat. After 40, 50, 70 years, there is what appears to be a “sudden lurch” in our culture in favor of abortion.

In reality, there was no “lurch” or even “drift.” There were industrious, eager PC-Progressive beavers inserting their anti-Normal payload into our culture. The results are nearly inevitable.

Now, look at all the elements of Normal-America that the PC-Progs are determined to destroy: capitalism, heterosexual marriage, WASP culture, and anything else that is considered “Normal.”

All of those cultural elements are being destroyed–steadily and inexorably.

Without understanding what the PC-Progs are up to, we have no chance to survive the onslaught.

Is there anything to do about the pickers is the real question. In defense oriented coping behavior is directed at protecting the self from hurt and disorganization rather than solving the problem. The right wing (for want of a better description) has long made this error. A good offense is the best defense; unfortunately none has come to fore. A worthwhile analogy is a bacteria or virus that the body cannot effectively fight. The infection spreads and eventually death or a crippling existence results.

Some forms of homosexuality were accepted in Ancient Greece. Apparently in some Muslim countries (Pakistan) the homosexual male is the one at the receiving end. And in the Bible male homosexuality is punishable, Nobody minded female homosexuality as there is no punishment for the act at all.

So this is about 2000 years of Christianity in Europe. For an argument that is supposed to be universal, that is a bit on the short and localised side.

As an engineer, I think I can mangle this whole topic badly. Stand back.

Societal change is a real-time optimization problem, where the cost function is unhappiness. The unhappiness function is not equally weighted by individual, of course. The unhappiness of the rich is weighted heavily relative to the unhappiness of the poor. The unhappiness of the loud is weighted heavily relative to the unhappiness of the quiet. Etc.

The drift is just the slow slide down the optimization curve. Because of the unequal weighting, some individual unhappiness will increase, sometimes dramatically, even while the overall weighted sum is decreasing.

As with all but the simplest optimization problems, the cost function is rife with local minima. Once society enters a local minima, the drift slows down.

The lurches are attempts to push society out of a local minima. Obama has shown us one possible source of a lurch – people with great power who can essentially pick society up out of a local minima and place it nearby, kicking and screaming, hoping the drift will speed up toward a different local minima which he prefers. In other words, lurch by tyranny.

Another source of lurches is more subtle. The many components that comprise the unhappiness function all have time constants. For example, consider redistribution of wealth, from the more productive to the less productive. The response time for those on the receiving end can be quite short, whereas the time constant for an indirect consequence, such as a drop in overall productivity, can be much longer.

To visualize this effect, envision a simple three-dimensional cost function as a terrain map, where the cost is the altitude, and current societal conditions as a single point sitting in a valley, with up-hill in any direction. Then imagine that the whole plane of the map is gradually tilting due to an inexorable consequence with a very long time constant. At some point, the “tipping point” if you allow the term, there is a downhill path in one direction with a very high second derivative, and it’s the resulting rapid acceleration away from the local minima that is perceived as a lurch.

Note that neither societal change nor the unhappiness function has inherent inertia; rather, there are time-constants at play, long and short, that mimic inertia. One important distinction here is that this ‘apparent inertia’ is not a constant, and societal conditions can and do gyrate wildly at times.

JMJ: I understand human nature. I just don’t believe that people are locked into hedonistic, damaging and destructive nature due to genetics, as seems to be the theory of some progressives. I don’t believe that all progressives, only some, are beyond redemption and incapable of rising above the evolutionary level of a gerbil (you know, sex however you want it, eat and run about as you want—no morals, no inhibitions). I understand that human nature makes people lazy and envious, but I also believe many humans can rise above that nature. I do not believe humans are so far down the evolutionary scale as progressives seem to.

Gary, I disagree. Mandatory public school education will be forced–and it is currently expanding. Look at the prevalence of and so-called demand for Pre-K. Today’s poor little four-year olds are going to have FOURTEEN YEARS of public schooling. But by the time they hit college, college will be similarly mandated (tuition will be somehow jerry-rigged or wiped out as the state is already in charge of student loans…. It will only take one piece of legislation to make it fully taxpayer-supported) as a de facto “re-education camp” that will be facilitated largely by un-credentialed administrators who have a driving interest in sustainability. So these poor children are looking at least EIGHTEEN YEARS of being under state control, with nary a thought of being “educated” in the classical sense.

Watch for the state to expand control even beyond college. You’ve heard about those studies that show that a brain is not mature until the person who’s head it is in is 25? Watch for 25 to be the new age of emancipation. Crazy? Hawaii is poised to raise the smoking age to 21. Twenty-one? Why not 25?

Katie, it’s an indisputable human right for an unemployed adult to not have their daily activities determined by a clock. Therefore they shouldn’t be required to get up in time to get their children to school. etc, etc … .
And by 2040 children choose their own cyber game-school on their pads.

Gary, I don’t see the teachers unions ceding an inch of ground. They have salaries, health benefits, and pensions on the line. I think kids will be in “school” but by that I mean they will tethered to a computer doing self-learning under the watchful eyes of a public servant monitor. Call it a teacher, call it a police officer, call it a probation officer, call it an elevator operator. Someone who is paid from the public purse and a member of the appropriate union will be doing the watching, as the parents cannot be entrusted with such activity.

Short of this, say the kids are working from home—and the parental unit had to work—the kid could be wearing the appropriate wearable gear, and his or her actions could be monitored by a third party (public servant, unionized, etc.) remotely. No actual teaching would be necessary, as the students would just step through the levels of the educational program.

As an Australia I would say she wildly exaggerates the so-called hate speech laws in Australia. There is a Racial Discrimination Act and the individual states have various Anti-discrimination Acts but there have been very few prosecutions and many of these have been quite controversial. There is a move to wind back the Racial Discrimination Act.

You are really comically square, man. It’s okay. I think it’s funny, in a nice way. You’re a real throwback.

In Conservative Catholic Land, I suppose you have as solid (and fixed) a grasp of humanity as one can have. To read what you write about things like sexuality and civil rights, man, it’s like you’re the offspring of Calvin and Aquinas. To be honest, I barely recognize it as Catholic, and I’m Italian, Irish, and Portuguese.

And when it come to politics (“scare quotes” !!! rotflmao!), you are one rank amateur. I have a tip for you, when you’re off with that institute saying things, don’t assume your smarter than everyone in the room. You may be, but it ain’t gonna win anyone over. It doesn’t matter what percentage of scientists are saying something. It matters who. That’s real life politics my friend.

It seams that you are like the slave owner when they lost their slave and wanted to keep their right to own a person. On your part you want to keep your right to take other people rights.

Of course, in the past rules were made to serve some societal needs. When the Jewish people escaped the Egyptian and arrived at what is now known has Israel, they realize that there people living on this land to whom they offer nothing else than death or flight to the people who the land that the Jewish claim was their’s. They didn’t take slave or offer anyone to join them. They simply killed everyone that stood against their claim on the land.

This had the effect that the Jewish people had a low population compared to other. This resulted in policies that were aimed at growing the population. Having 1 man and 1 woman could have been seen with some advantages comparing to the Egyptians harem and way of life.

Did making these rules change much of anything other than being used to killing people or in many cases destroy people that could be considered political opponent

Everywhere rules are made by the “elite” or ruling class, and they very rarely apply to that class. But with time the elite change and the rule do to.

After Darwin, and before World War Two a large part of people were classifying races saying that this or that races were superior to other. Eugenics was considered a valid science. Racism was everywhere. After WW2 and the discoveries of the reality of the death camps, and promoted in part by the progressivism of the USA, which conveniently refuse to look at the way blacks were treated, the situation started to change. People started to realize that freedom was a matter of individual right not one of a collectivity right.

Your vision is that collective right are more important than individual right. Your problem is that your kind is not part of the elite anymore. This means that your kind cannot tell other people how to live there life.

There are two areas where drift or creep become major problems. One is social policy and the other is economic policy. Attacks on free speech is a disturbing trend. We live in an age of great intellectual ignorance. Free speech can’t be free only when the herd think that speech also has to be ‘nice’ according to certain ideological criteria. I would not like to see nitwits from either end of the spectrum have their way. Any reasonable idea pushed too far becomes unreasonable. I’m not someone who believes abortion should be banned. That doesn’t mean I’m going to defend late term abortions either. Making it unlawful to incite violence is one thing. Make it unlawful to hurt someone’s feelings, quite another.

The problem we have at the moment is that the West is starting to loose its grasp of where the center is. It’s gone too far left, into stupid. When that happens, people hopefully shift back towards the center. In a worst case scenario, the problem is misdiagnosed and the push in one direction goes ever further and harder. That doesn’t tend to end well.

Sylvain wins the door prize for being the first to bring up slavery. And for forgetting practical eugenics was a progressive program. The “practical” part meant progressives (socialists of varying stripe) were ready to—and did—use active culling techniques. But his comments are useful in showing the left says its rules are based on “human nature”. They are based on a false version of it. JMJ keeps calling us “conservatives”, which is slightly insulting.

JMJ: I’ll give you the upper level knowledge of progressive politics. You have mastered the condescending, nasty tone necessary and never say anything of substance. You are definitely a politician, one with little or no use in a free society, but great in a dictatorship or any totalitarian regime. You can set humanity back 300 years to the serfdom that ruled the land. Something I’m sure you’re proud of. (Time to buy more chickens, by the way.)

To all: The United States would have been the one that moved from the center ideals of rulers and subjects in the 1700’s. We were the movers then. It could easily be argured leftists are just returning to the serfdom and helplessness associated with the human race in the past. Until the US, no one even considered humans had any rights not given to them by their government. So progressives are really regressives, trying to return to the original womb out of fear of living an adult life dependent on their own skills. The Romans had us beat by a mile for bad, damaging behaviour. Perhaps that’s the goal of the left—outdo Rome for evil, bad and damaging behaviour to your subjects.

“Our Government will be absolutely committed to equality not just in law but in fact too. We are committed to race equality strategy. That is why we are committed to breaking down barriers of discrimination.”

Making a particular group special in the eyes of the law is somehow promoting equality? Interesting logic. It would be a crime to express Islamophobia but not a crime to express WASPophobia? How exactly is this equality in the law and fact?

Let us suppose slavery is wrong (without being overly nice about definitions) and that some have said it was not wrong and part of human nature. From that all that follows is that sometimes people are wrong about human nature. Just as the left is wrong when it says, inter alia, it is “natural” for a man to pretend to be a woman.

You can easily solve such a situation, without even going into what is wrong and what is right.

The reality is that there is no real human nature since no two human are the same. Is it in the human nature of mankind to kill other human. For the vast majority it is not in there nature to kill, even in theater of war, while for very few it is in their nature to kill.

In the last 50-60 years, the drift has been toward the individual, from the collective. In this conception, what matters is how the individual person is affected by the collectivity.

Slavery is not acceptable anymore because the slave has no freedom. Homosexuality is accepted as long as it is between consenting person, would it be between two consenting teenagers, or adult. Pedophilia is unacceptable because a child cannot consent to an adult.

That a male transformed is appearance into a woman and now goes into toilet reserved for woman doesn’t affect anyone unless he attacks woman while in the toilet. That a person is a LGBT doesn’t affect your right to marry and like woman. You even have the right to not like it. What you don’t have the right is to treat them different than anyone else when dealing with them.

Sylvain: There is no right of a child to have to consent to an adult, and there is no reason pedophilia is any more or less wrong than any other sexual orientation. If you argue an adult cannot make choices for a child, then parents cannot vaccinate their children, send them to school or raise them in any way. The so-called age of consent varies widely from culture to culture. You have no right to impose your idea of how old is old enough on anyone else. If my culture says six is old enough, you either behave hypocritically by saying I cannot have my belief or you shut up and let me live by my rules. I am positive you will not shut up because YOU personally do not like this sexual orientation and as most progressives, you WILL impose your belief on me no matter what. Hypocrite.

(I would note that hypocrisy seems to be the norm for progressives—Al Gore has a carbon footprint bigger than some third world countries and progressives seem oblivious to this in many cases. Global warming conferences spew out huge CO2 footprints and progressives just shut their eyes and pretend it’s not a problem. )

Angry much. Not all adult can decide for children, only the parent or adult with legal guardianship can take decision concerning a child. Even then their are limit to the decision that parent can take for their children. Parents cannot agree to a pedophile request to rape their kids for money or not. There is no psychological stigma to homosexuality, other than those created by society invading the individual, while the stigma of pedophilia is well documented.

If you culture says that six is old enough to decide, then you are not in north america or europe. You have the right to believe that six years old is old enough to make decision about sexuality. But legally you cannot act on it. The difference is between the belief and the action.

Your misunderstanding cannot be clearer than by what you wrote here:

“…you either behave hypocritically by saying I cannot have my belief or you shut up and let me live by my rules.”

You can have any belief you want but you cannot act on all of them. Your freedom starts where the freedom of the other person begin. You can believe that being gay is a sin or an abomination, but other people can have different belief. In the end, YOU just have to not have homosexual relation, that two guys have sex somewhere is of no regard to you.

I will not shut up, but we have a discussion and I am not imposing my belief on you.

Yes, Al Gore is an hypocrite and a very bad spokesperson for the AGW crowd.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, the president of a fledgling Republican party. Adolf Hitler was the most aggressive supporter of the ideas of the eugenicists. A national socialist.

It’s never helpful to argue that the “left” is good and the “right” bad or visa-versa as history will never be on your side. Then the argument degenerates more and more into stupid. Claims that the “left” was really “right” and the “right” really “left” because by definition “left” = good so whatever is not good = “right”.

I’m happy to play Bad Cop to Briggs’ Good Cop. Slavery is natural and normal. Moreover slavery has not ended, but has in fact accelerated, indeed at an astonishing speed in just a generation. A person who cannot provide for himself via free labor is ipso facto a slave. Such a one has never been, and cannot not be a slave.

What is at work is a cruel trick of propaganda in which we lie to ourselves about the nature of the thing. That “Chattel Slavery” (a term of art in 19th C Puritan Propaganda) has been “abolished” helps us maintains this illusion, which we readily believe because we wish to be seen as moral.

Sylvain, the hypocrite: Children do NOT consent. Evil parents force children to eat whatever they are served, to wear clothes, to learn to use a toilet. These are very personal bodily functions that are controlled by the parent, and the prescribed behaviour demanded of the nonconsenting child.
Sex is a bodily function, just as food and toilet functions are. It is NOT special and different unless you inject religion into the argument. Then it becomes morally wrong if not between a man and a woman in many religions. So we can’t go there without you losing the homosexual argument. Since sex is just a bodily function like eating, children have no need or right to consent any more than they can sue their parents for dressing, feeding and toilet-training them. If their parents are okay with their child having sex with an adult, then it’s okay. That’s how it works in the “consent” world you keep referring to—parents have the final say. Now, if the child is not to have sex with adults, the child gets grounded or otherwise punished, just as he does for spitting out food he doesn’t like or peeing on the carpet. Remember, it’s a bodily function, not something unique or special. The adult is perhaps fined, as those who sell cigarettes to minors are.

The use of “special” status for sex is how progressives and others are simply trying to weasal out of the reality of their claims by making up rules and ideas that will let them approve of only that part of their world they want to be true.
Again, I would remind you that if children cannot consent, then two 15 year olds having sex should both be jailed for violating one-another. Two 15 year olds CANNOT consent according to your statement. So why are we not arresting sexually active teenagers??

Sylvain, in your post of April 27, 4:52, you state, “In the last 50-60 years the drift has been toward the individual, from the collective. In this conception, what matters is how the individual person is affected by the collectivity”.
This ascendancy of the individual seems to me a very important element in your thinking on matters under discussion here. As one who was a young adult in the late 1950’s and 60’s I am curious what you regard as the primary cause of this significant change.

“Sylvain, the hypocrite: Children do NOT consent. Evil parents force children to eat whatever they are served, to wear clothes, to learn to use a toilet. These are very personal bodily functions that are controlled by the parent, and the prescribed behaviour demanded of the nonconsenting child.”

How does your statement contest my claim that children cannot give consent?

As I said above: “Pedophilia is unacceptable because a child cannot consent to an adult.”

You seem angry to agree with me.

For sex: the age of consent vary from country to country and state by state. In Canada it’s 14 in the USA mostly 16 year old. But even then, if the age difference is to great consent will not apply even if the teen claim he or she was in love. But consent can be given between two non adult teenagers of similar age.

Before the 1800s in North America women were considered the property of the father or husband of a woman. It was them that received damages from the court in cases of rape for the diminished value of the female.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, was the result of the experience of the Second World War. With the end of that war, and the creation of the United Nations, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of that conflict happen again. World leaders decided to complement the UN Charter with a road map to guarantee the rights of every individual everywhere.”

I am angry with you. You refuse to explain, other than you just don’t want it to be that way, why children can consent to each other and not to an adult, why sex is any different than eating or toilet training, which the parent decides for the child yet you refuse to allow the parent to decide if the child can have sex with an adult. You just make these statements and assume I’ll believe you. Psychology says you’re completely wrong on this and it annoys me that you pretend to be open-minded and so forth, yet you are very, very closed minded. Pedophilia is only a problem if we tell kids it is. It is not intrinsically bad. We lied to kids now and told them homosexuality was fine. We can lie again and tell them pedophilia is just like homosexuality, just a sexual orientation that people have, and they will believe it. It’s a proven FACT that this is the case. Yet you refuse to go with a sexual orientation being acceptable if YOU don’t like it. That makes you a hypocrite and I get very, very angry with hypocrisy. You pretend to be soooo fair, but you’re not. You just want your way and that’s it.

There is NO justification whatsoever for accepting one or two sexual orientations as normal and dismissing those you don’t like as wrong. You are as bigoted and mean to pedophiles as you claim others are to homosexuals.

The child cannot give consent because he has no knowledge of what sexuality is, and the pedophile forces himself on the child. Pedophilia is also not accepted when the parent is implicated. Pedophilia causes psychological problem to the child while relation between 12 years old are not known to cause trauma, unless it is rape. Two 12 years old boyfriend/girlfriend exploring their sexuality give consent to each other. If one of them does not it becomes rape.

The guardian of a child has to make decision for the good of a child. Consenting to sex is not regarded as acting for the good of the children. Guardians who don’t act for the good of the kids can either lose the guardianship or go to prison.

BTW, you realize that it is the law that says that parent cannot consent about sex for a child of less than 14-to 16 years old.

“Pedophilia is only a problem if we tell kids it is.”

Pedophilia was not condemned until recently (1800s), yet children who were victim of pedophilia were having psychological problems.

The complete opposite happens with the homosexual who suffers less psychological problem when they are not stigmatized by society. But the example of psychological trauma are absolute when the kids went to conversion therapy.

Pedophilia is different than homosexuality in the fact that it is not both participant that give consent. The same goes with bestiality where the animal cannot give consent.

I personally care very little about sex, I find it blah. People can do pretty much whatever they want with who ever they want as long as they BOTH agree about what they do. I don’t care that a 40 something guy mary an 18 year old.

Sylvain: I am arguing that if you accept homosexuality as just another orientation, you cannot then exclude any other form of sex. The argument that homosexuality is natural or genetic or whatever applies to every other sexual orientation. You cannot just throw out the ones you don’t like, which is what most homosexual proponents do and you are doing. We haven’t even touched on polygamy—all consenting adults, so you must be okay with that one.

No, if children cannot consent, they cannot consent, even to each other. You have shown no reason why parents cannot consent for their child. Even if it is bad, so is letting your kid eat Twinkies and donuts and drink soda all day, but parents are allowed to do that.

Do you realize how many young children are forced by their peers to engage in sexual acts? And you seem to think these are all just kids exploring sex. No, kids peers can be far more influential and cruel than any adult. Yet you seem in favor of this often cruel practice.

There is a plethora of psychological research that shows the fact that we tell kids it’s horrible that a pedophile had sex with them is what does the damage. We are telling kids they are ruined, damaged goods, scarred for life. Seems to me we are the cruel ones, damning them for eternity because of a childhood trauma which we defined. (Just curious–how do you know kids in the 1700’s had problems with pedophilia?)

This consent is a dead horse you keep flogging. I don’t consent to the IRS auditing my books, but I don’t get a choice. Cows don’t give consent, but we eat them. The bake shop owners did not consent to being sued by two homosexual zealots, but they didn’t get a choice, either. Until we require consent for everything, you’re just trying to weasel out of the logical ramifications of your believe.

Note, too, that a pedophile is created when a 17 year old having sex with a 15 year old turns 18. The same two people having sex are now not consenting. There’s nothing rational in any of this–which is not surprising since it’s driven by “I want” and emotion.

I don’t exclude other form of sex. I don’t know what causes homosexuality, or why some adult are attracted to children.

The difference between the two of them is that it happens in the first case between two consenting person either adult or teenagers, and in the other case the consent is not mutual because one of the participant doesn’t have enough knowledge or capacity to consent.

Yes, I do not have problem with polygamy. Though the state will only recognize only one marriage as valid.

“No, if children cannot consent, they cannot consent, even to each other. ”

Legally the law says they can. This is why they are not put in jail. Though if a teenager rape a girl is age, he will suffer consequences. But if they both say they were consenting then the cops can do nothing unless there was an adult.

“You have shown no reason why parents cannot consent for their child. ”

Where is the good for the children that a parent would consent to sex from an adult? What is known is that the kid will suffer psychologically from the experience.

Eating junk food does not cause psychological trauma. The trauma comes from the fun other people makes of the fat kid.

“Do you realize how many young children are forced by their peers to engage in sexual acts?”

No one should be forced to do anything they don’t want to do. If a child is force into something he doesn’t want to do, than he should complain to the authority/parent.

“There is a plethora of psychological research that shows the fact that we tell kids it’s horrible that a pedophile had sex with them is what does the damage…”

I’m not sold to that concept.

About the 1700s I did a research paper that dealt with that fact in one of my classes at university.

” This consent is a dead horse you keep flogging…”

I do not agree to all the law impose by my government but I do abide by them, or suffer the consequences if I break.

We cannot legally kill yet there are 1000s of murders every year. And those that are caught have to pay the consequences.

The baker choose to make cakes for a living. He has a place of business. He cannot discriminate to whom he sell is cake to. There are many ways that a Christian baker can get out of making a cake for a gay wedding. He just doesn’t have to take pleasure in telling the gay couple that he disagree with them and that they are sinner. He just has to not be able to complete the order for other reason than a gay marriage.

Yesterday Briggs twitted a link where a t-shirt shop owner was cleared of discrimination for refusing to print a pro-gay message on his t-shirt.

An 18 year old sleeping with a 14-15 year old is not a pedophile but a sexual offender, and that is if there is a complaint which usually comes from the girl parents. Even then it is not automatic that the 18 year old will be found guilty.

Sylvain the hypocrite: Okay, I’ve now tired of the same old drivel here. You want what you want, there’s nothing rational about it and you want to impose your will on everyone else, just like you accuse others of. You love homosexuals and hate pedophiles and polygamy, even when all are just sexual orientations. You try to throw in “consent” and that is completely invalid yet you refuse to give any other reason. It’s all situational ethics to approve of what you want and disapprove of what you don’t. You are exactly like those you criticize—judgmental and discriminating against those you do not like.
I have other things to do besides repeat my questions and you repeat your answers that don’t really work. If someday you manage to wake up and realize you are exactly like those you criticize, get back to me. Maybe we can work from there.
Oh—”exactly like those you criticize” means you use consent and other nonworkable ideas to justify your prejudices in the same way you accuse others of using religion. Doesn’t matter what invalid, emotional arguments you use, the behaviour is equivalent.

Sylvain: Okay, I’ll answer a bit here. I have no idea what your first comment means.
Did I choose to fall in love? Yes, I would have to say so. My choice in a mate what due to a chance meeting, but I married because we were very compatible. I did not marry the first guy I dated, the first crush I had or any of that. I married based on both emotion and rational thought. I didn’t marry someone else because you can’t have more than one husband. If I met someone now that really turned me on, would I cheat or divorce. NO–I made a commitment and I chose to stick with it. I love my husband and he loves me–not based on some emotional, in-heat, purely biological reaction. It’s commitment. Most people, apparently yourself included, confuse lust and love.

A homosexual wanting to marry is a political statement. People shack up all the time without marriage, straight and gay. It’s a desire to force Christians to stop saying homosexuality is a sin. A desire to vote out morality. It is not love.

As far as I can tell from single mothers with five kids and five different fathers, heterosexuals are as fickle as pedophiles. Homosexuals are even more free with the partner changes–note the AIDS rate for homosexuals.

You still have not given me any good reason why homosexuality is fine but not all other sexual orientations that people are born with—which is all of them. You say this is not hurting society, but unless you are advocating for people to demand approval of their bad actions as being good for society, that would be false. None of this is good for society—only for those who don’t like rules and want to run wild over everyone who gets in their way while constantly condemning people for disapproving (ie they are all hypocrites). This is not love, it’s not “fairness”, nothing. It’s meanness, rule-breaking, angry, in-your-face bad behaviour. Homosexuals used to quietly live together and not advertise their behaviour. When they started putting up “Sodomy lives here” signs in their front yards and demanding we approve, it was not about love at all. None of this movement is about love—just anger and hatred for people actually having morals and stating them.

My first point was that with homosexual and heterosexual there is consent and even reciprocity. Man sleep with a man, a woman with a woman, an adult with an adult or a teenager with a teenagers. Polygamy is a life style choice and the state will recognize only one as valid for legal matter.

A pedophiles does not sleep with a pedophiles, but he sleep with prepubescent infant that do not have sexual urges. Just like a dog will not have sexual urges toward a man or a woman. Attraction to a pubescent or postpubescent have other name than pedophiles.

I never chose with whom I felt attraction or not. They have always been woman. And usually girls/woman that were attractive for me did nothing for my friends and vice versa. It is in fact very rare that I feel attracted to someone even if by society standards they are considered attractive.

There are many conception of what sex is. Some people like it more than other. It doesn’t make someone less moral to sleep around more freely than other, just like it doesn’t make someone more moral to be with only one mate. The question is: is it done in mutual respect of each other.

There is also a difference between sexual orientation and attraction. Pedophilia and bestiality are an attraction. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are orientation. Although, both can be fickle, but only orientation can lead to everlasting love. A pedophiles is attracted to children of a specific age as soon as they grow older the pedophile will lose interest

Sylvain: A man and a woman are very different, yet you’re okay with the idea that they sleep together. Your idea seems to imply that only things that are the same can sleep with each other. That makes no sense. Besides, a pedophile sleeps with another human being. The only difference is one is older than the other. They are the same species. We labelled one a pedophile, but that does not change the fact he/she is human and so is the person under age 18. The label changes nothing.

Actually, sleeping around does make one less moral. And damages society, spreads disease and cheapens attachments between people. We become animals, which I have noted seems to be the goal of this whole exercise–anarchy, no rules, no morals. The destruction of society is an admirable goal, I suppose, but I refuse to adopt it as my goal.

No, there is NO difference between sexual orientation and attraction. Another attempt to bypass the ramifications of your beliefs. There is NO difference. Also, you just argued that sleeping around is not a bad thing and then you say it is if a pedophile does it. How can I take anything you say seriously when you constantly contradict yourself?

I can only laugh at some of the ignorant comments on this insightful post which describes lurch and drift so eloquently. As usual, it is the SJW brigade on the war path once more. I would advise not getting into highly-involved debates with these people, who have the sodomy agenda as their #1 priority these days, with other issues on the back burner for now.

The Conservative has trouble with this debate. The Reactionary does not because he is willing to take the label of ‘bigot’ with a smile on his face. He simply doesn’t give a ****. Why would he?

The criminalization of sodomic activity is perfectly righteous because it is sanctioned by the Divine Moral Law, which gives us instruction as to ought and ought not, the basis of the Traditional society. This activity is described as an “abomination” and is similarly detested in almost all major religions. Such is the will of an Entity who is intrinsically incapable of error.

Now, the Modern Liberal responds “But I don’t believe in your God!”

My answer to that is “He doesn’t care, and neither do I”. The Reactionary is not interested in secularism, fairness, equality, or democracy. We are interested in truth, hierarchy, theonomy, and stability. For thousands of years deviants like sodomites, harlots, zoophiles, and child molesters were relegated to the lowest caste as muckrakers, unless they suppressed their desires in order to appear normal. Thus, their destructive influence was unable to decay human civilization. It is unfortunate that in the Kali Yuga, they have become so powerful, even powerful enough to convince otherwise normal people that they are the pinnacle of virtue. Alas, this was predicted: the regression of the castes.

The Liberal wins if you play within his paradigm, if you debate within the Overton Window of what is acceptable reason. The key to defeating them is breaking out of this window and taking not the attitude of 1950s Conservatives but 1450s Traditionalists. If you don’t accept secularism in particular as a starting point, they’ve already lost the argument because the BS ground they build their argument from turns to quicksand. It follows logically that if they are forced to enter a debate with an entity of Divine origin, none of their arguments are worth anything. They lose automatically. What’s more, it exposes them for what they actually are. The craven enemies of truth, righteousness, and the species itself.

Once upon a time, even coming into near contact with such people was deemed likely to cause some spiritual contamination and they were rightly regarded as the lowest of the low. We should not abandon this position on our enemies just because they expect us to “play nice”.